Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the door to Telma’s bar eases open, she’s already stepping out from behind the counter to close it. Damn thing has a busted hinge, which has had many promised repairs and zero actual ones. It’s raining like the heavens are coming down outside, and the wind has blown open the door more than once. She’s close to wedging it shut permanently.

But when she gets past the counter, she comes to the swift realization that it wasn’t the wind at all.

It’s a wild animal. Its jaws are flecked with foam, barrel chest heaving. Rain has soaked it through, damp fur dripping onto her floor. Its eyes are piercing, blue, and fixed right on her. It’s every image of a nightmare.

She’s had plenty of experience wrangling those, and, conveniently, there’s a goron sheltering from the storm here in her very bar, Taruk.

But something gives her pause.

The beast does not growl. While its jaws are open, gleaming teeth shining yellow in the light of her bar, they aren’t bared. Slowly, deliberately, the beast lowers its head. Presses it down between its paws.

It takes her a moment to hear it, past the crack of thunder outside, but its whimpers almost sound like a name.

Telma would be a fool, at this age, to not believe in the other. Whether the golden goddesses really sculpted this earth, she cannot say, but she has seen ghosts, monsters beyond imagining, and good brave people who are willing to risk everything to very little reward.

So when the wolf at the door of her bar whimpers for Zelda, Telma lets it in.

She’s aware of Taruk’s presence, looking over her shoulder in the way gorons tend to when stood next to hylians, but like most gorons, Taruk is easy-going when it comes to oddities.

“Huh,” says Taruk. “That’s a big dog.”

Input given, he turns, thudding out of the way as Telma moves back behind her counter for a towel. His comment catches the attention of Ashei, who squints with nothing short of suspicion at the wolf.

“That’s a wolf,” she corrects, though there’s no way for Taruk to know the difference.

Telma kneels next to the beast, boxing about its ears with a towel. She’s aware of Ashei coming up behind her, but most of her focus has moved to one of the beasts’s legs. A broken off shackle dangles from the beasts forepaw, but more prominent than that— to Telma’s eye, at least— is the symbol of the golden goddesses shimmering on its fur.

She doesn’t linger. She moves down that leg, and then back up the other. Scrubs at its chest. Begins to move the towel around to its back.

For the first time, the wolf growls. Low, warning. She lifts the towel away, gently, and the growl ceases.

She casts a discerning eye over the fur there— while damp, it’s dryer than the rest of the beast, and if there’s a wound there she can’t see it.

She towels off its hind legs, which it tolerates.

“There,” she tells it, placing the sodden towel on a nearby table, “you can come in now. You’re after Princess Zelda, hm?”

“Odd that he knows to come here, yeah?” Ashei says. Despite her tone, she steps out of the way as the wolf pads further inside, skirting around Taruk as he comes back with something to keep the door closed for good. The wolf shoots the goron an uncertain glance as he sets the barrel he requisitioned from behind the counter down in front of the door, effectively sealing the beast in, but he doesn’t growl. There’s true intelligence behind those eyes.

By now, the rest of their little group has gathered around the beast— with the exception of Shad, who is remaining a healthy distance back.

“Unusual to see a wolf so far from Ordon,” Auru says.

“Or from Snowpeak.” Ashei drops to a knee, and studies the wolf eye to eye. “Not a colouration I’ve seen before.”

“Yes, it’s very unique— why are we letting it in the bar?”

“Look at its paw, honey.”

There is a collective beat of silence. Shad lets out a quiet, perhaps slightly awed ‘oh’.

Auru and Ashei pull out the ladder leading to the abandoned waterway as Shad flips through one of his books, fingers tracing the words.

“What the Triforce is doing on a wolf,” he says, “I couldn’t tell you. But that marking is genuine.”

“I figured as much,” Telma says. “Is there anything we can do about that cuff? It looks—“

The wolf gathers his legs under him, and with a sharp bark of effort, he launches into the rafters of the bar. He has to scrabble up, hind claws leaving gouges in the brick that will probably be there for longer than Telma will, but he’s up.

He glances back at them, once.

Ashei climbs the ladder. She pauses at the top, half straddling it, one hand resting on her sword’s hilt in a manner that portrays perfect comfort and ease.

“I’ll be back soon, yeah?”

“Be careful,” Telma says, even though out of all of them Ashei is the one who needs the warning the least, “that tunnel’s been abandoned for years. Who knows what kind of evil has moved into it?”

Ashei nods, blunt, and then the two of them are gone.

Taruk sits with a heavy thud, scratching at his chin with one hand. “Now that I think of it, I think I’ve seen that wolf before…”

While the wolf is much faster than her, he never leaves her behind. They make steady progress, even though the tunnel is about as treacherous as Telma warned. Near immediately they’re accosted by a lizalfos, and the wolf surprises her by lunging for the monsters throat.

Most animals, that she’s familiar with, no matter their status on the food chain, cower at these things. The thick hide makes them nigh impossible to wound deeply, and they have a keen, sharp mind that loves to inflict pain. There isn’t a safe angle to approach one, and however fast you think you are, it is faster. Despite how relatively tiny its shield is, it is a master with it. Ashei has seen a number of good men and women felled by these things.

But the wolf approaches it like it’s a slight bump in the road. The lizalfos snaps to attention, shield raised, deadly tail waving in anticipation, and the wolf crouches low, a deep growl working free of his chest. The lizalfos lowers its guard a fraction in preparation to strike and the wolf is already in the air, hooking paws around its shoulders as powerful jaws close around its throat.

The lizalfos dies screaming.

Ashei doesn’t give herself time to be impressed; two swift sword strikes dispatch the keese that had been flocking the monster.

The wolf watches her, and inclines its head slightly. She returns the gesture.

They continue.

It isn’t the most challenging work she’s done, though it is by far the worst smelling. Things have had time to fester in dark corners down here, but her canine companion doesn’t let that slow him, so neither does she. In fact, she would go as far as to say that progress is fairly smooth… until they reach a room filled with skulltula.

All considered, it doesn’t take many skulltula for the room to be ‘filled’. In fact, by her count, there are three. Three spiders that could look her in the eye without lifting off the ground. Three spiders fat from evil.

Ashei isn’t squeamish about spiders, or skulltula’s, for that matter, but much like the lizalfos earlier she knows they aren’t a trivial foe. The chitinous armour on their backs and legs is nigh-impenetrable with a sword— the best method of attack is to stab them in their tender underside when they’re rearing back to attack— a method ripe with risk, for evident reasons.

The wolf doesn’t let these beasts slow him, so neither does Ashei. The wolf races past the nearest skulltula, throwing himself at one of the two lingering at the back. Ashei takes that as a division of labor, and draws the spiders attention with a solid blow to its front legs.

She’s focused enough on finding her moment that she doesn’t quite see what happens.

Her sword is thin and sharp enough that she’s able to run the skulltula through down to the hilt. It’s fangs skitter against her gauntlet before the monster dies in a puff of foul smelling smoke, and when that clears…

The wolf is hunched low over something Ashei cannot see, a tremendous growl filling the cavern. One of the skulltulas circles behind, walking awkwardly from having two legs torn off. The other seems more interested in what the wolf is protecting— before Ashei can move, the skulltula’s tighten in, and from somewhere in the nest of legs there is a sharp yelp of pain.

She needs no other warning. A sharp whistle leaves her lips, and a moment later her sword pierces one of the skulltulas in the centre of its skull.

Her father told her that, in moments of great stress, she should have reliable instincts to fall back upon. Then, he had trained those instincts into her, and it’s those instincts that tell her she is not going to be able to turn in time to defend herself or the wolf from the third and final skulltula.

The wolf spins faster than she thought possible.

Powerful legs launch it into the face of the skulltula, coming up at such an angle that he plows it over, knocks it flat onto its back. It writhes, spider legs squirming for purchase, but the wolf is already biting down, teeth tearing through the tender underbelly.

The skulltulas legs curl in. The wolf shakes its head, and drops something out of its mouth with a wet splat.

The skulltula fades.

Ashei takes a deep breath, and suddenly finds herself not minding the dank air as much. At least, she is still able to breathe it.

“Thanks,” she says, the first thing she’s said to the wolf outside of Telma’s bar. It grumbles low in response, and attempts a step forwards.

Attempts, because it turns out the skulltulas got one of them after all.

Ashei’s been bitten by a skulltula before. The wound had bled, inflamed, and had given her a fever until her father was able to brew a strong enough red potion or fight it back.

This bite is worse than that one. Dark fur clumps together on the wolf’s flank, trailing crimson streaks to the floor. It looks, in a word, churned.

The wolf takes two more stubborn steps, and then lists heavily. He doesn’t quite collapse, but it’s a near thing.

Thankfully, people in Castle Town are much, much better at brewing potions than her father ever was. Ashei retrieves the emergency bottle she keeps on herself, and then pauses. Will the wolf understand that this helps?

“Hey,” she says, and the wolf’s eyes snap from the floor to her face, then to the bottle. She had more to say, but there’s recognition in that look. Wherever this wolf has been, wherever he has come from, he recognizes a potion.

She pulls the cork.

The wolf looks back down, and noses insistently at a patch of cobble. No, just above a patch of cobble. A dark spot. A shifting shadow.

Ashei experiences a brief pulse of nausea, and then an odd sensation like the world has just clicked into place— except she wasn’t aware it was ever out of alignment. She imagines it a similar sensation to wha t Shad must have felt when he first put on his glasses.

Lying on the floor is an imp.

It’s dragging in ragged breaths, one hand resting on the wolf’s snout.

“Don’t be… stupid,” it wheezes. “Get to… Zelda.”

Moving slowly, Ashei drops into a low crouch, and then, when she proves to be too far away, onto her knees for a slow shuffle. The wolf’s attention snaps back to her, to the potion in her hand.

He looks conflicted.

Ashei puts together several pieces of a puzzle she wasn’t aware she was doing.

“She’s right,” she says, “you need this more than her. You’ve been carrying her around, yeah? Neither of you are gonna get far if you can’t walk.”

What she doesn’t say is: I don’t think a red potion could fix what’s wrong here anyway.

The wolf growls, low, like he can hear what she’s thinking, and then tilts his head back. Ashei, obligingly, pours the potion down his gullet.

After the last drop hits his tongue, he snaps his teeth, and then runs his tongue over them to clean them. Shakes his head. Regains his footing.

Ashei shoves the cork back in, and pockets the bottle. She doesn’t stand, just yet.

With his paws under him, the wolf nudges again at the imps side. She reaches up, takes a loose fistful of fur, but anything beyond that seems more than she is capable of.

Perhaps, if Ashei was raised with better manners, she would have asked about what she was about to do. Instead, she quickly— but gently— scoops the imp into her hands, and deposits her onto the wolf’s back.

“You need something to help hold on?” She asks.

The imp is too busy giving her a wide eyed look.

So, once again, Ashei takes matters into her own hands and donates her belt to the cause. Ideally, she’d have something better— but there was little point in carrying bandages around when you could instead take a potion, and ropes were bulky to the point of uselessness without a pack of some kind to keep them in. Besides, this is a good belt, sturdy. It’s served her well for many years.

She ties it snug, but not too snug. The imp wheezes out what might be a thank you, or could be something ruder than that. Ashei shrugs it off like she does most things.

Not long after that, they come across a mountain of rubble. The wolf jumps to the top with little trouble, but Ashei knows when to give up the ghost.

“Stay safe,” she tells the wolf, and as he leaps into deeper waters she turns back the way she came.

Much, much later, she’ll see the wolf and his impish companion forging the winter winds of Snowpeak, and feel a thrum of warmth in her heart. They both seem much improved from that desperate trek under Castle Town. She doesn’t get her belt back, though.

No, that comes much, much, much later— and it’s handed to her by Princess Zelda herself.

But that’s a different story.

Chapter Text

Uli isn’t strictly a religious woman. In fact, pretty much no one in Ordon was— their little community was too small for a church, and too self sufficient to count on gods. Of course, that didn’t mean they didn’t pray, on occasion. When an ill goat pulled through, or a kid that wasn’t breathing gasped in, Fado would send up a loud and fast thanks to the goddesses.

When Talo had broken his arm falling out of a tree, Jaggle had thanked the goddesses he hadn’t broken anything else.

When Uli had given birth to Colin, Rusl had bowed his head low and stayed quiet for a minute. When he raised it, tears streaked his cheeks, tracing the biggest smile, and she loved him enough for it to try for a second.

Now, Uli closes her eyes.

Colin is gone.

So are Beth, Talo and Malo, Ilia, Link.

Rusl is wounded, his blood wormed under her nails, and he’s still dragging himself on a foolish quest for vengeance.

The nighttime has never felt so thick and so cold.

So she closes her eyes, and prays. The single most desperate prayer she’s capable of.

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.

When she opens her eyes, there is a wolf.

She starts, lets out a soft gasp. Born and raised in Ordon, she had grown up fearing and respecting the woods and the creatures in it with equal measure. She had also grown up familiar with what an aggressive wild animal looked like.

This was not that.

It did look terrible, she would say. Fur clumped with dirt— and possibly something else, though in the dark it all looked the same— one paw held tenderly above the ground, while its head dipped with exhaustion.

Still, its eyes were sharp, blue, and fixed on her. She had little doubt that if it so wanted, it could kill her.

For some reason beyond her understanding, it doesn’t seem to want that.

“Hello,” she says, quietly. The wolf doesn’t respond, swinging its head around to look over its shoulder at where Rusl had limped away. Its gaze moves, sidelong, back to her. She reads a question into it.

“That was my husband, Rusl… he’s gone out to look for the children. They’re all… missing.”

The words try to clog in her throat, and the image of Colin— alone, afraid, weeping— tries to make her cry. She focuses on the wolf, instead. If she starts crying, she won’t stop.

The wolf faces her again, and then dips its head low. Presses its snout against the earth. Before she can wonder what on earth it’s doing, it lets out a low, plaintive whine.

If she didn’t know better, she would say that it was asking for forgiveness.

“It’s not your fault,” she tells it, heart swelling with sympathy. “No one knew it was happening.”

She does feel a bit silly, speaking to this wolf like it understands her. But the way it appeared, and how it acts now— it feels almost like an answer to her prayer.

There’s only really one thing to do.

She opens her door, and invites the wolf in.

And then, when the wolf hesitates, takes a half step backwards, she insists .

The wolf obliges.

It pads carefully over the welcome mat, and moves with purpose to the corner of their house with the broken up floor, from where Rusl had gotten it into his head that their house needed to be bigger and had started working on it before they could get the supplies together. The wolf sits on the dirt there, but even with that little bit it has shed clumps of dirt and other things onto the wooden floor. Uli doesn’t mind, of course— Rusl alone had tracked in worse, never minding when Talo and Malo came to visit. In fact, aside from Beth and her parents, the only person in Ordon who seemed to care at all about cleanliness was Link.

These thoughts send a fresh pang of loss through her. Instead of simmering in it, she retrieves the wash bucket, some soap, and what leftover bandages they have.

This, at least, is something she can do.

The wolf submits to the scrub-down with minimal struggle. She has to pause more than once to fetch fresh towels— more of the dirt than she thought was actually blood, caked thick around several wounds. Deep talon scratches over the wolf’s shoulder. A number of cuts and scrapes with no clean origin. Stranger still, there are several places that seem like they’ve been bleeding, that have no wound that she can find. Not even the shiny skin suggesting scar tissue.

Something has treated this wolf before. She isn’t sure what to make of that.

When she notices, for the first time, the broken off shackle with blood encrusting its edges, she thinks maybe she might not like what she thinks of that.

This wolf has been nothing but gentle. To think someone would look at it and think to chain it down and—

She’s letting her thoughts carry her away, again.

She lifts the injured paw, and wipes the blood away as gently as she can. The wolf growls, low in its throat, but there’s no warning in it. The tender skin around the shackle is split and bleeding.

She has nothing to remove it with. No lockpicks— though there doesn’t seem to be a keyhole— and any expression of physical force is just as likely to take the wolf’s paw with it.

When she next fetches a clean towel, she also selects two specific bottles. One is a potion, which will do the wolf nothing but good now that she’s cleaned its wounds.

The other is a very specific lotion. Rusl had spent much of his pay on it in Castle Town a little over five years ago, and most of the bottle still remains. It protects skin against mundane problems— chafing, chapping, and, hopefully, cuffs. It’s strong enough that a little dab goes a long way, but after she’s coaxed the potion into the wolf she applies two fingerfuls to the tender skin around the shackle.

Rusl had said it was mostly a luxury, and had used it only when he was planning on visiting Telma for a while. Of course, that didn’t mean that every time he noticed her hands had chapped from the work she did at home he didn’t ask why she wasn’t using it, or when Colin had come home crying from a skinned knee he hadn’t applied some to their sons skin and told him it would keep him safe.

On one occasion, even, Link had come in with hands rough and sore from a long day’s work at the farm, and both Rusl and Uli had reached for the bottle without so much as glancing at each other.

There are a lot of tender memories wrapped up in this bottle.

She offers it to the wolf. It sits back, eyes wide, and shakes its head.

“I understand,” she starts, “that this may seem silly. Offering you a bottle.” She’s not sure how to fit the enormity of what she’s feeling into words. The despair. The warm rise at doing something, even something small and foolish, to help. “But I need to do something,” she says.

It seems to do the trick. The wolf’s ears fold back, and it gently leans forwards, snagging the bottle from her hand with gentle teeth. Without thinking about it, her hand moves to ruffle the fur at the back of its head, and there’s the steady thud-thud-thud of a wagging tail.

It does only endure the petting for a moment, before getting to its feet in a fashion that is much, much steadier than it was before.

Uli stands with it, already half turning to open the door to let it out, but the wolf doesn’t go that way. It passes behind her, to the couch they inherited from her mother, and presses its nose to the sheathe of the sword that Rusl made as a gift to the Royal Family.

Uli can’t really fully put into words why she does what she does.

But she gives the wolf the sword.

The broad band of leather meant to secure the sword to a human chest fits slightly awkwardly on a wolf one, but the blade itself sits between its shoulder blades like it was meant to be there.

When she opens the door to let a rush of cool night air in, the wolf growls a low note— a thanks, of sorts, she thinks, but before it can step out she speaks— “If you can, I want you to find them. Please. The children. Colin. Link. Please.”

Rusl, limping his way back up the path, misunderstands the situation.

He sees his wife, teary-eyed. The door of their house, open, her hand still on the handle. He sees the wolf, and while he doesn’t see the bottle in its mouth he does see its teeth.

Perhaps, were he in his right mind— not injured, and not fresh off of the terror of the children being taken, he would have made sense of the scene.

He does not.

Terror and adrenaline give him strength and speed, and he almost flies up the path, hilt of his sword warm in his hand.

“Uli!” He shouts, more of a roar.

The wolf bolts into the night, a streak of darkness that fades out of view swifter than Rusl can follow. In his heart of hearts, he’s glad that it spooked, that it didn’t lunge at him with teeth, because he likely wouldn’t have been capable of defending himself. Not as he is.

Uli sets him to rights about the wolf in short order, though she does kiss his cheek— meaning she isn’t truly mad. He is, admittedly, a little baffled by her actions, but this is a dark and terrible night. He won’t deny her the solace of looking after something, even if that something is a wolf.

And he’ll wonder, the next day, when he speaks to the village and hears that Hanch had nearly been attacked by a vicious wolf-monster, saved only by his quick reflexes. And he hears that Bo and Jaggle were similarly endangered, a sharp eyed beast creeping at them out of the tall grasses surrounding Jaggles house.

He’ll wonder about Uli’s visitor. About the sword that it took. About the fact that Jaggle’s heirloom shield has vanished.

And… he’ll wonder, when he sees those things on Link’s back, just what became of the wolf.

He’ll never ask.

But there will come a day, when Colin is returned and Maren is born, when Link is too restless to stay in tiny, sleepy Ordon, when Rusl knows deep in his bones that he’ll never need to pay a visit to Telma’s bar or his friends in the resistance again…

There will come a day when Uli will open the front door, and find a single bottle still half full, and a sword stowed carefully in its sheathe. She won’t say anything about it.

When Rusl carves a new toy for his children, he carves a wolf.

Chapter Text

The darkness has clogged their throat for so long that the sudden lack is a surprise. They don’t even realize, not right away. Everything has been so dark.

But the darkness is gone now, its fetid tendrils vanished into the soft light of home. The first clear gasp of air they take in feels like it could fuel a lifetime. It’s incredible.

They can see the sky again. It’s as gorgeous as it always was, and they can see it again.

Their face feels funny, stretched out and too small all at once. Their body feels disjointed, as if it’s adjusted to limbs all different lengths and now they’re normal again.

The darkness is gone .

They realize what drove it away was a Sol. Someone brought them a Sol. Their eyes don’t want to look anywhere but the sky, so they force it. Blinking scares them for a moment, a return of the dark— but this dark is still coloured through by twilight pressing against their eyelids.

There is the Sol. A gorgeous blue thing, humming a joyous note. It’s carried by a pair of unfamiliar hands, and they watch as those hands hold it close to another Twili. Is that what they looked like?

The darkness is driven away, and they recognize their neighbour at once. But more pressing than that are who the hands belong to.

They already know it is not Midna. Those are not her hands. But it’s still a shock to follow them up to arms, a torso, a face, a light-dweller.

The light-dweller carries the Sol close to everyone they can, purging darkness as they go, before placing it down in one of the sacred grooves that Zant had stolen it from.

Perhaps it’s a trick of the light.

Perhaps it’s a leftover from the dark, or from proximity to the purifying power of the Sol.

Maybe it’s a deep, ancestral knowledge.

But they look at the light-dweller, and see.

The light-dweller leaves in pursuit of the second Sol, though how they know that they could not tell you, and they allow their aching eyes to return to the sky.

When the light-dweller returns with the second Sol, they look away once more, just briefly. They aren’t one of the few to retain the hylian tongue, so it’s likely completely meaningless to him, but they call out just the same.

“Thank you, sacred beast.”

And maybe, his shadow will flicker, and they will know that Midna has heard them as well.

And maybe, when all is passed, and Midna returns, stepping back into the twilight with tears on her face, they’ll say:

“Thank you too. I hope you told him.”

And maybe, Midna will crack a ragged smile and a rough laugh, and all will be well, and the only dark in the twilight is the dark that belongs.

Chapter Text

Talo’s eyesight isn’t good enough that he can see the whole of Kakariko from his perch, and Malo had sold the Hawkeye mask to Link, which meant he couldn’t even use it to see better.

So, when he sees a distant dark blob enter the village, he instantly thinks of the last few times he’s seen distant dark blobs, and starts screaming.

Kakariko is inhabited scarcely now, and those inhabitants are already battered and scared, so it’s the work of seconds for it to become a ghost town with every door locked. Talo has a stack of rocks, which are incredibly easy to collect and less easy to get up to his perch, and he starts throwing them with as much accuracy as he can manage. After the second or third rock falls far short, he thinks longingly of Link’s slingshot— or, even cooler, the bow that had left an arrow in the pole next to him— but he doesn’t have either. He has a collection of rocks.

The dark shape gets closer, and Talo throws the biggest rock he’s got. It’s a perfect shot, against all odds. He thinks maybe he got the shape’s head. It lies down for a while, and Talo wonders if that means it’s dead.

Whenever Link killed monsters, they puffed into smoke. He tests another rock, remembering about the angle and speed that he put into the last one, and this one looks like another perfect shot— until something swats it away midair. Talo doesn’t see what, but the idea that this thing might have magic scares him badly enough that he doesn’t throw another rock.

After another while, the shape gets back up. It staggers a little, when it leaves town, and Talo feels all of his adrenaline leave him in a rush. He has to sit down.

“That was a good throw!” The Goron below him shouts up, gesturing with excitement. Talo guesses it was, but it wasn’t like he successfully killed the monster. Just scared it off for a bit. It could come back. Hopefully Link is here when it does.

He feels a little sick, actually. He wants to go check on Malo. And Beth. And Colin, too.

He wishes Link was here.

It takes him a little bit to feel steady enough to climb down from his lookout spot, but everyone is okay. Renaldo tells him there won’t be another monster today, and tells him to go play with the other children. Talo does, but he doesn’t feel any relief until he notices there are Gorons watching the passage into Kakariko. Nothing could get past them, except maybe Link.

The next day, he’s working his way up the ladder with a few more rocks carefully secured, when the goron that’s been doing watch with him rolls up. He unfolds, and waves cheerfully. Talo waves back.

“Little brother, I have been meaning to ask,” the goron says, and Talo pauses to hear him out. “Do Hylians typically dislike dogs?”

“What? No! Everyone loves dogs— except my dad, he says they smell bad and poop in weird places.”

Malo says when Malo Mart makes enough money, he’s going to buy guard dogs for them. Talo already has names picked out.

“Huh,” the goron says, raising one hand to scratch at his head. “But yesterday, you threw rocks at the dog.”

“What?” Talo says, and then he has to scramble to catch the ladder again. The rocks he had collected bounce down the side of the cliff. “That was a monster! It had magic!”

“Huh. If you say so, little brother. But it sure did look like a dog to me.” The goron turns, shading his eyes from the sun as he stares down at Kakariko, completely unaware of the turmoil he’s sparked in Talo.

Talo completes the climb, and sits at the edge of the building.

No monsters come.

The next time Link is in town, Talo clambers down and runs to meet him. He’s in a conversation with Renado, inasmuch as Link is ever in a conversation. Talo always thought his silent guy act was cool, but he could really use a familiar voice telling him that everything was gonna be okay.

Not that Link’s voice would be familiar…

They notice his approach, and the conversation quiets. Link gives Renado a look out of the corner of his eye, and Renado smiles.

“Go ahead. I have taken up quite enough of your time.”

Talo grabs Link by the arm, and tugs him to someplace quiet. It’s not hard to find somewhere like that in Kakariko, even with the gorons around.

“Can I borrow the Hawkeye mask?”

Links head tilts in the way Talo recognizes as him asking a question.

“I have to look out for monsters, and it’s kinda hard to see sometimes from my spot.”

A faint narrowing of Link’s eyes. He knows there’s something else to Talo’s request, and he won’t give anything up until Talo tells him.

“… and also I drove off a monster recently but the goron that keeps watch with me said it was a dog and I don’t wanna throw rocks at dogs.”

Link’s expression eases, and the corners of his mouth curl in a smile. Talo knows he’s won even before Link pulls out the mask.

Barely a day after, Talo is keeping watch again when a dark shape moves into town.

Talo nearly drops the mask before he can get it on, and then fights the controls to zoom in as much as he’d like— he’s had plenty of practice with it, over the hours, but nerves have made his hands disobedient.

Finally, the shape resolves itself.

Talo recognizes a wolf when he sees one. Once, when he was Malo’s age, there had been a wolf that had limped into Ordon. Talo wasn’t supposed to know about it, or see it, but he slipped past his mom and dad to see because— a wolf, how cool was that?

It was injured. Bleeding onto the grass, each breath a laboured thing. Rusl had been there too, holding a sword.

Talo never saw how it resolved, because Rusl spotted him and ratted him out, but he never forgot what that wolf looked like.

This one is slightly larger, darker in coat. It looks healthy.

It’s also just sitting at the edge of Kakariko, right about where Talo would be shouting in alarm. It’s silly, but it feels like it’s watching him.

“Is that a monster? Should I sound the alarm?” The goron asks.

The wolf tilts its head to the side, and Talo is reminded vividly of Link. Link would be brave.

“No,” Talo says, “it’s just a wolf.”

Talo does watch very closely as the wolf ventures into town. Beth sees it and dashes inside, but one of the Gorons Malo has working with him just scratches the wolf’s ears. The wolf doesn’t seem to enjoy it, but it doesn’t attack.

The real test comes when the wolf reaches the hotel. Colin had been sitting with his legs stuck through the railing, but he had stood up when Beth ran, hands held in trembling balls between him and the wolf.

The wolf tilts its head, and then sits. Colin doesn’t relax. The wolf settles down, and presses its jaw to the ground. Talo can’t hear anything from here, but he can imagine the plaintive whine.

Colin hesitates, and then proves Talo wrong for every time he’s ever called him a liar.

He pets the wolf.

The wolf tolerates this better than it did the goron. Beth re-emerges with Renado and Luda in tow, but neither of them seem prepared to be faced with Colin making fast friends with the wolf.

After that, the wolf is a pretty regular occurrence. Usually it just dashes though, but sometimes it stops and lingers. Talo maintains his thought that it’s a magic wolf, since it shows up in places no wolf should be able to get. Like the hotsprings at the top of town, or on top of Renado’s house, and when that Shad guy visits he swears he saw the wolf in the basement even though there’s only one exit and Talo didn’t see the wolf go in.

That’s okay though, because everyone likes the wolf. Even Prince Ralis, who spends most of his time being sad. The only person who doesn’t like the wolf is Barnes, but he doesn’t like anything that doesn’t explode.

Eventually, Talo relaxes his watch.

Eventually, the wolf stops visiting.

Eventually, an arrow thuds into the post at the top of the tower when Talo is up there, and he uses the Hawkeyes mask to see not only Link, but a caravan too.

Eventually, they go home.

Talo sees other wolves sometimes, running in the wilds of Faron. He’s never too friendly, but never too hostile either. The Kakariko Wolf was an outlier, a strange case, and that it trusted him even after Talo hurt it, and as such he never forgets it.

When Malo gets those promised guard dogs, Talo chooses to name his Wolfy.

Chapter Text

Coro is pretty familiar with these woods by now. By and large, every time he sees a predator, it’s skirting the treeline, and ignoring him entirely. The exceptions are those bugs— do they count as predators? They sure were hunting him— the occasional bokoblin that passes by— does a bokoblin count as a predator? Or is it just a monster? They don’t eat people, do they…?— and the wolf.

He sees the wolf a number of times. It’s usually hurrying past, and acting rather un-wolf-like. Not that he’s going to tell the wolf it’s doing a terrible job being a wolf. That’s a fast track to receiving a mauling.

One time, the wolf does approach him with something like intent in its eyes, but it gets sidetracked by his soup. It’s nose wrinkles, it shakes its head, and growls a low bark before looking extremely surprised to have done that. It trots away at speed, and shortly after, that hylian guy Coro gave a lantern to stops by for a refill.

Coro doesn’t think about it too much. The woods are weird.

.•.•.•.

The Gorons never really cared about the wolf. His teeth or claws didn’t have a shadow of a chance of even scratching Goron skin— and besides, he enjoys hot springs.

.•.•.•.

Fyer has run his stand with Falbi for longer than he cares to remember, and despite his general attitude and disposition, he does love his job. And his husband. And Lake Hylia.

It’s so quiet here, especially compared to the rest of Hyrule. Falbi says a couple Quays have nested on the rocks just outside his half of the shop, and besides that, there are Bulblins between Castle Town and here.

The guards obviously aren’t doing their jobs. Fyer has half a mind to set the Cuccos loose on them. At least Falbi is only ever one quick Cucco hop from safety.

The only exception to that had been the whole commotion with Zora’s Domain being frozen over. He’s still a little fuzzy on the details of how that got fixed, but the Zoras seem to be just as unsure so it works out.

Oh, and then there was that time a wolf came out of nowhere, stopped barely ten feet from him, and started howling. Fyer had been edging towards the cannon before a giant Kargarok swooped down and snatched it up.

He took the ride up anyway. Falbi was thrilled to see him, as always.

.•.•.•.

The Zora never really gave a damn about the wolf either. It wasn’t like they boasted the imperviousness of Gorons, or could claim to be oblivious about the creatures, what with living so close to Snowpeak.

Perhaps they felt the safety of the water like a shield— no matter how swift on land, the wolf could not catch a swimming Zora if it tried.

Perhaps it was because the wolf never tried.

.•.•.•.

Agitha notices the puppy right away, because it scares the lil coccinellidae she was looking at away.

She puffs up her cheeks, and puts her hands on her hips. Then, to really sell it, she stomps a foot and then gently bops the puppy on the nose.

“Be careful, puppy!”

The puppy looks confused. Agitha giggles, and goes back to sorting through blades of grass. Ooo, a coleoptera! How pretty!

She doesn’t notice the puppy leaving.

.•.•.•.

Impaz is still adjusting to being able to open her windows in the morning. She had pried the wooden barricade off of them the day she was freed, and then used the pockmarked wood for her stove. Looking at how many arrows had been fired into it was sure to give her nightmares, otherwise.

Drawing back the blinds to welcome the sun is an easy reminder that she’s safe now, thanks to that Hylian boy. Sometimes she spends an hour or so just enjoying it.

She’s still a little nervous to spend much time outside, but the sun reaches inside just as well.

That specific morning, she draws back the curtains to much activity. Her grip on the blinds tightens, and she’s barely cognizant of the way her heart rate and breathing pick up. It was foolish to stay here, she should have known, it was only a matter of time before they came back—

One of her cats ducks behind a crate, tail lashing. Impaz is frozen— she needs to open her door, to let her cats in, but if she does—

A wolf drops from one of her neighbours balconies, landing steadily on all fours and pressing its nose to the ground.

It lifts its head, already padding to where her kitty is hiding, and Impaz is thinking about all those old Sheikah techniques she regretted never learning, and the wolf stops.

Snifs the top of the cats head. Her cat sits down primly, tail wrapped around all four paws, and meows loudly. The wolf turns, already sniffing out another cat.

It looks like— it looks like they’re playing a game.

Impaz rubs her eyes, but the image doesn’t fade. She sits down heavily at her table, realizes that her face is wet.

She spends the rest of her morning watching the wolf playing hide and seek with her cats. There’s no danger at all.

A few months later, she takes her cats and moves to Kakariko with them. Even as desolate as the village is, it’s nice to have company. Human company.

.•.•.•.

Yeto encounters the wolf twice. Once, he decides it is not nearly meaty enough to make good soup for Yeta. Twice, Yeta doesn’t need healthy soup anymore.

.•.•.•.

And, of course, the two that could never be afraid. Two princesses, one of light, one of shadow.

One who looks at the wolf and first sees a tool, and then later, a friend. A confidant. Maybe something more. Someone she’ll miss beyond measure.

Another who looks at the wolf and sees someone she already knows innumerable times over. Sees her destiny, and his destiny, and more than that, sees a boy who didn’t ask to be caught up in this and a man who did not start this fight but who will end it.

Ultimately, Hyrule will never really shed its fear of the dark, or wolves, or of evil, and for good reason. Too many lives have been lost, too much good blood shed, for the world at large to be anything else.

However, there will always be those courageous few.